


Alone

by anxiousgoat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Cutting, Gen, Not Really What You Could Call A Happy Ending As Such, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Self-Harm, trigger warning for self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24881809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anxiousgoat/pseuds/anxiousgoat
Summary: It isn't just teenagers who self-harm, and it isn't just some trend. It's a way of surviving. Not a healthy one, but sometimes that's all we've got. Minerva McGonagall has just survived a brutal battle, and now she needs to survive the night.This story could be triggering if you're someone who self-harms: please be careful, and be safe ❤
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Alone

Alone, finally.

What a fucking… godforsaken… day. Night. Frankly, she’s lost track of how long it’s been. First there was Potter, and then there was You-Know—Voldemort, and then there was fighting and death and more fighting and victory, yes, but corpses everywhere, too, and the sound of blood and the smell of people grieving.

Minerva is still at Hogwarts, in her own rooms. Some of the staff quarters were destroyed, but hers escaped, as did she.

And how that happened she has no sodding idea. She was supposed to be the one who stood between her students and danger. Protect them, yeah. She flings herself down on the bed, laughs harshly at herself. Protect them. That’s a joke. This last year has been an absolute _sodding_ _nightmare_. Protection? Well, none of them actually died, but that’s not much of a boast.

Then she corrects herself. None of them died until _today_.

Yesterday.

Whatever.

All those corpses. Staring eyes. Blood. Limbs at unnerving angles. Parts missing, hideous gashes, frozen faces, cooling and stiffening as she lifted, carried, placed down, body after body after body and not a stranger among them. Students. Colleagues. Friends. Enemies. An ex-lover or two.

Bloody buggering bollocks.

Sod.

Fucking fuckulating fuckeroonicus.

Minerva sits up, swings her legs off the bed. This is no good. She was barely even injured but her skin feels like it’s on fire. Their faces flash through her mind without stopping, she doesn’t know how to stop them. Children died too soon. So did adults, come to that.

Fuck.

She’s pacing her room, striding, up and down, down and up, round and round and round and round and round and round and round but it isn’t helping. She’s burning up. She thumps her forehead, then twines her hair round her fingers and tugs hard.

It’s not enough. She halts, suddenly, right in the centre of the room, quite still, as though suspended. Her mouth closes, her breathing slows, her arms fall to her sides.

It’s been a while.

She pushes up a sleeve, runs her fingertips over the skin of her inner arm. They leave a trail of tingling sensation behind them, and she knows it’s inevitable. The one thing that has always helped. Last time was the night Dumbledore died: it got her through the night.

Moving slowly now, calmly and deliberately, she walks to her desk. At the back of the bottom drawer on the left hand side is a small box, which contains, cradled in white silk, a small, sharp, silver knife. Her fingers close around the smooth handle. She lifts the knife out of the box, replaces the lid, leaves the box on the desk.

Sitting on her bed, she lays the knife on her knee while she rolls her sleeve up, neatly. Then she picks the knife up again, takes a deep breath, releases it, very slowly. The knife flashes.

One.

Two.

Three.

Oh that’s good. That’s _wonderful_.

The faces are gone at last. The stench of blood and death are replaced with a blurry bliss. She closes her eyes. She’s floating. She can feel her own blood running down her arm. It’s probably dripping onto her robe, perhaps onto the bedclothes. A giggle escapes her at the thought. She pretends her eyes are open and she’s floating through the sky, clouds passing her, the occasional bird.

The only sensations on her body are the warm threads that wander over the skin of her arm.

It is a long time, or a short time that feels like a blessed long time, before she begins to bob down towards the ground, and at last she is seated once again upon her bed. It feels softer now. Gentler. Her breath is clean and correct in her lungs, and her body is relaxed.

She exhales and opens her eyes, smiles at the gashes on her arm. Three dark wounds in a row, blood still running from them.

She sighs. She can sleep now, she thinks. Sometimes she cleans up and heals herself straight away, but that doesn’t feel right this time. After all, the bodies lying downstairs – no, this is not the time to think about that. Her pain and her blood and her small wounds are keeping those thoughts at bay, but they are a flimsy barrier. Sleep now, and in the morning she will be fitter and stronger, ready to face whatever is to come.

For now, she leans down to untie her bootlaces, pulls the boots off her feet, drops them on the floor, crawls under the blankets fully clothed, cradling her arm in front of her, and closes her eyes. She falls asleep within seconds.


End file.
